


When We Wake

by Barkour



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Curtain Fic, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:50:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A night of uneasy dreams leaves Guy shaken. But he isn't alone now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When We Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Future fic in the pre-DCnU canon.

What woke him? Guy lay blinking in the dark, his eyes hot with sleep. Sleet drove against the windows; that must have been it. He shifted carefully and the snow layered on the blankets, disturbed, fell apart. His breath misted. Guy curled against the cold, but it wasn't the cold he curled from. Strange ghosts moved at the back of his head, and his heart thrummed. He'd dreamt-- What had he dreamt? He pushed it away.

His hand touched Tora's hip. He turned to her. She lay pale and cold and still beside him, so very still, and for a moment the dream came spilling out of the black spots in his brain. Red worm in the ice, red worm in his ear, Tora's hands red. Then Tora sighed in her sleep. She drew breath--her back swelled minutely--and stilled again. Guy tucked his face against her nape. The trembling he felt in his skin, that was the cold. He pressed closer to her; he wrapped his arm around her small and steady shoulders. Her clavicle fit between his first and second fingers, and he exhaled in time with the pulse that beat against his palm.

Tora stirred and made a little sound. Her shoulder pushed into his chest; her elbow stuck in his ribs. He caught a moment's glimpse of her narrow cheek - snowdrops scattered white along the acute suggestion of bone, her eyelashes dripped with frost - then, in a soft white cloud, she rolled so her mouth brushed his collar. Her lips parted and his throat prickled where her breath roiled across his skin.

"Time's it?"

He smoothed his hand down her knobbed spine; his fingers filled the little dip at the small of her back. Guy bent to touch his brow to hers. Her breath frosted his chin. His eyes closed. They stung, and wasn't that a bitch.

"Early," he said. "Too early for good goddesses to be up. Go back to sleep, babe."

"Dream," she murmured. Her fingers crept up his chest.

"Yeah?" he said, thinking of: white snow. Tora laughing, not-- "What about?"

Now her thumb traced the shape of his jaw. She'd tipped her head back, but her eyes were closed; her lashes glittered on her cheeks. The tip of her nose very nearly touched his, and that one fractional distance seemed to stretch out without end before him. Guy tightened his arm around her waist, and Tora wriggled closer. Her hand slipped around his neck; her nails, cut short, scraped.

"About you." The vowels fell swollen from her tongue.

"Now is that a fact," said Guy. He nuzzled her. "Sounds like that's something you'll wanna get back to."

Her lashes glimmered; she looked up at him through them. There was more than a hint of ice to that look.

"Stay," said Tora.

"Hey," he said, "what kind of jerk do you take me for? I'm not about to run out on some hot chick in my bed."

Tora snorted into his throat. "My bed."

He traced a knob low on her spine.

"Our bed," said Guy.

He felt her smile against his chest. Her cheek was cool on his breast and the hand on his nape was no warmer, and hell if he wouldn't gladly give up all his fingers and most of his toes besides to frostbite if she'd just stay right there for another year or twelve.

"Yes," said Tora. "Our bed."

She'd snowflakes in her hair. The window beyond her shoulder was slick with ice; that, at least, wasn't her. This first winter's storm would grow stronger before it finally tottered away. That's how it went. Things got worse and then they got better. Hey, ho, whaddaya know. 

Tora's breathing slowed again, and as she slept deeper into that hibernatory sleep of hers, the bedroom slipped into winter. Damn, but he wasn't looking forward to drying all the sheets in the morning. Guy rested his cheek on top of her head. The snow laced through her hair began to melt.

"Same to you," he said. "No running out and getting yourself dead again, got it?"

She sighed in her sleep. Good enough. Guy glanced at the alarm clock--a quarter past seven and the alarm'd be going off in another ten minutes--and sent a little questing finger forth from his ring to slide that alarm straight from buzz to radio to not on my watch, buddy. Hey, if the lady said stay.

Guy kissed the folded corner of her eye, then he curled around Tora and waited for the sleet to stop. 

*

"Why didn't you wake me?"

Guy looked up from the griddle. Tora, her hair a wild, white tangle spilling around her shoulders, stood rubbing at her face in the door. Her nightshirt had hitched up her right thigh; sleep rumpled and bruised her eyes. His chest tightened. Guy smiled to see her.

Tora's fingers slid down her cheek. She blinked owlishly at him. Her nose wrinkled, and the corners of her eyes creased softly.

"What? What is it?"

He turned back to breakfast. The sausages were sizzling dangerously, and the pancakes had goldened. Absently, he reached across the kitchen with a green hand to pour out the coffee for Tora, that German white chocolate crap (and he thought: don't call it crap; she hates it when you call it crap and besides, if Tora likes it, it ain't crap).

"Just thinking about how good you look in Ravens' purple," he said. He glanced over his shoulder at her and grinned lopsidedly. "'Course, I was also thinking about how good you look out of it."

Tora set her hand on her hip and frowned, but hell if he didn't know her well enough by now to know she didn't mean much by it. Her eyelashes flickered, white as snow, and Tora ran her little finger under her left eye.

"Here. Coffee," he said, "just the way you like it. One sugar, three creams."

A fleet of tiny construct Guys bore the mug to her, and yeah, there it was: a smile pulled at Tora's mouth. Her long, pale fingers folded around the mug, and the steam rolling off the top spun in her throat like something he didn't know a word for. Delicately, she brushed her hair behind her ear; the curve of her jaw was a stark, even thing beneath her rounding cheek as she smiled down at the mug.

A sausage popped on one end with a noisy splat.

"Aw, crap," Guy said. He flipped the sausages off onto a plate. Three of them, burned. The pancakes had passed gold and gone straight for brown.

" _Did_  you turn my alarm off?"

Tora had sat at the table. She cupped her chin in her right hand; her left hand cupped the coffee still, and her fingernails tap-tapped against the glass. Her lashes had dipped low over her eyes. 

"What, me?" Guy snagged the syrup and the butter, the O.J. and the milk, and dragged the whole mess to the table, green tethers bobbing behind him. "And what am I gonna gain from sabotaging your clock? Never mind that whole paragon of justice sworn to uphold order and decency throughout the cosmos, blah blah blah, yadda yadda. Hope you don't mind extra-crispy."

Nimbly, Tora caught the serving plates and the basket of silverware.

"Mm-hm," she said. She set a plate down before him as he sat and kept the other. "I've never pretended to understand how your mind works."

"What can I say? I'm complicated."

They sorted through the silverware, and Tora handed him a napkin. She unfolded her own and bent to smooth it over her lap. The sleeve of his Ravens' jersey had slipped down her left shoulder, exposing the joint. The bones showed, faint, in the movement of her arm. She'd a spattering of freckles on her arm, like dark stars in a pale sky.

"Betcha can't guess what I'm thinking right now," he said.

Tora lifted her eyes. Her brow arched; so did her lips. She cradled the mug of coffee to her breast.

"I'm sure I don't want to know," she said crisply.

He'd never been much good at the romantic displays, and maybe if he'd known what to say on a couple occasions when he hadn't it wouldn't have taken so long for her to be here, sitting across from him, and him to be here, sitting across from her.

"I gotta proposition for you," he said. "How's about you and me, instead of us going to the game tonight, we stay in a while? We can do whatever you wanna do. You wanna watch  _March of the Penguins_ , we watch those penguins march."

Tora laughed. "That's very generous of you, Guy."

"Hey, I ain't kidding," he said. "And anyway, that movie ain't half bad."

Tora reached across the table and set her fingers on his forearm. Her thumb stroked the inside of his wrist once, so lightly it was as if a phantom touched him.

"I know you aren't," she said.

He turned his hand over, caught her wrist. The veins showed like lacework through her skin, like a spiderweb in a mist. The bones in her arm were solid, though; so, too, was her skin. His palm rasped against her palm. Guy looked down at her graceful fingers on his arm, at his own clumsy knuckles where they bent around her wrist.

"You want I should drop you off at the League before I clock in?"

"No, but thank you very much, Guy; that's very sweet of you." Tora stroked his wrist again and tipped her head to one side. "But if it isn't too much trouble, would you mind meeting me at the headquarters this evening?"

Jeez Louise, those baby blues of hers. And damn, if there wasn't some small, greedy part of him that wanted to say the hell to the League and the Corps for the day and see if he couldn't talk Tora into saying her own gosh darn to 'em, and then spend the day doing whatever they wanted with each other. But he wouldn't. Tora wouldn't, either.

"Anything for you, baby doll," he said. "I'll be there with bells on. Green ribbon, too."

"Just what I've always wanted," said Tora slyly, "my very own rød bjørn."

"Ha ha," said Guy. "Very funny. I'm gonna take that as a compliment."

"Well, you certainly are," she said. "But you're my rød bjørn."

"Damn straight I am," said Guy.

Maybe the tape would show it wasn't the smoothest move he'd ever pulled - for one, he got syrup down his actual for real not even slightly a construct sweatpants, and for two, Tora dropped her mug which meant guess which number one GL of all time would be busting out the mop to wash that up - but Guy got up out of his chair a little and leaned over the table and planted one on her. Tora made a surprised noise and then her hand tightened around his wrist and she laughed again, very softly, this time into his mouth. Her breath was a puff of winter, and the sharp fragrance of fresh fallen snow stung his nose. Guy cupped her jaw and tilted his head.

If he'd ever needed a reason to justify getting maple syrup on his Wolverines sweats, this was it.

Then Tora touched his chin; her fingertips pushed, very gently. Guy took the hint, but he lingered to kiss the tip of her nose.

"That was my favorite mug, Guy," she said reproachfully.

"I'll get you a new one."

"It was a gift from my mother."

"So your mother'll get you a new one."

"My mother made it," said Tora.

"Oh," said Guy. He grimaced. "Sorry."

Her fingers were still on his chin. Gently, Tora brushed a kiss across his lips.

"I'll forgive you," she said, "but only because I am very, very hungry, and after you've cleaned this up, I'd like to eat this wonderful breakfast you've made. But  _you_  are going to explain to my mother why it is that the cup she made for me in honor of my heroism should be broken."

"Hey," said Guy, "she likes me, remember?"

"Not as much as I do," said Tora sternly.

Guy lifted her fingers from his chin and kissed her knuckles. He closed his eyes, and on the backs of his eyelids he saw: Tora in the snow, the white snow, Tora laughing and alive and holding out her hand to him.

"Don't I know it," he said.


End file.
